Upon finding out a verse novel had been longlisted for the Man Booker prize, I was - as a lifelong lover of poetry - extremely excited to read it. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy The Long Take nearly as much as I expected to, for a couple of reasons. Robertson's obsession with American street geography and 1940s pop culture references detracted from the rhythm he worked so hard to establish. The glimpses of poetic greatness were undercut by the heavy-handed treatment of Walker's PTSD and the motif to early cinema that felt largely forced. Perhaps Robertson's intention was that the focus on film and LA street names would mirror Walker's attempts to suppress memories of the war, but it didn't quite work for me. Robertson chose to tell this story in verse rather than prose, but then ignored all the amazing qualities of poetry (e.g. its ability to convey abstract emotion) and used it instead to tell a fairly two-dimensional story. There were definitely moments of pure poetry (like his description of Coney Island during daylight), but as a whole, the book fell flat.